Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate space in Unicode)

From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Tue Feb 20 2001 - 15:10:29 EST


Tobias Hunger said:

>
> Looks like David was quoting me. I am working on Babylon and wanted to make
> clear that it is not unicode conformant as its API uses 32bit wide characters
> which violates clause 1 of Section 3.1.

No longer, as Peter pointed out.

> Babylon can im-/export UTF-8/16/32
> (UTF-7 is in the works) though, so I'm aiming for 'unicode compliant
> interchange of 16bit Unicode characters' with Babylon. For more details
> please see pages 107/108 of the Standard.

Also out of date. This was also subjected to a major revision in the just-completed
UTC meeting.

These actions were taken to make it clear to everyone that use of a 32-bit
encoding form is *not* inconsistent with a claim of compliance to the Unicode
Standard, now that UTF-32 has been officially added as a sanctioned encoding
form. From this date forward, no one should have to jump through hoops to
explain how their 32-bit wide character implementations are and are not
conformant to the Unicode Standard.

Antoine Leca said:

> Peter_Constable@sil.org wrote:
> >
> > Eh? Unicode has no aversion to either a 32-bit encoding form (UTF-32 - see
> > UTR#19 or PDUTR#27) or with C++.
>
> Read also TUS3.0, par. 5.2 on top of page 108...
> As far as I know, neither UAX-29 nor PDUTR-27 has changed these words...
>
> That said, one can see it as a overview that ought to be corrected.
> As the guy that fighted to introduce the most wide uses of ISO10646/Unicode
> in C99, I will certainly welcome any change in this area! ;-)
>

All taken care of in the rewrite of section 5.2, based on the last
UTC meeting's review of the text of PDUTR #27.

In general, folks, please calm down a little. The text of PDUTR #27 is
out-of-date -- it was a *Proposed Draft*, after all, for review by
the UTC. And the editorial committee has been working furiously to update
the text for final posting. We decided not to publicly post a bunch of
intermediate drafts every 3 days during this process, to avoid generating
more confusion about the text drift. But the scheduled date for the
next public draft of what will become UAX #27 in the final Unicode 3.1
release is this Friday, February 23.

I cannot promise that all issues will be resolved and all truth will
be revealed in that document, but much of what has been discussed on
this thread should become moot.

--Ken



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